


Purple stripes

by Septdeneuf



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre Canon, iz rvb challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 14:53:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6989950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septdeneuf/pseuds/Septdeneuf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't think you realize how bad this planet's gotten. The only people who aren't wearing armor these days are dead." </p><p>Written for Goodluckdetective's RvB challenge: "What did I miss?" (scenes that didn't appear in canon)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purple stripes

It hang odd and looming in Emily Grey's closet. The stark white lines, the weird shape of the helmet with its undersized visor and counterintuitive design, everything about it was off putting. Its implications even further than its design. 

There had been discussions for weeks in the media about this. How it symbolized a dystopian twist to their society. How it was an authoritarian move that would only strengthen the resolve of those who stood against the government. How this would turn ordinary citizens into military targets and drag everyone into the war. How it would mean the terrorists were winning. 

But in the end none of those arguments really held up against the pure numbers. At the latest terrorist attack, twenty two people had been caught in the fire. Five of them Federal Army soldiers in full biomechanic body armor, the rest civilians wearing normal clothes. The five soldiers had come out of the incident with relatively minor injuries, though Emily had to question when collapsed lungs and massive blood loss had become minor injuries, but all of them had been released from the hospital within a matter of days. Out of the seventeen civilians only two would survive without lasting disabilities. One had lost both legs, another would probably never speak again due to massive brain trauma and two would be massively disfigured from burn wounds, provided they managed to live long enough to wake up from their medically induced comas. 

Nine others had been declared dead on the scene, while the last two had been in good enough condition to be transported to the hospital where they'd diagnosed their brain death. She'd harvested their organs to transplant into other people on the same day. 

The heart monitor sounding an alarm for asystolie, because she had just removed and was holding the heart in question wasn't something that would leave her dreams anytime soon. Surgeon's hands were supposed to save lives, not end them.

But, on the plus side, that same heart was now in a different patient and beating happily along, and she'd beat her personal best time on that particular transplant, so, you know. 

And while the fact that now Federal army uniforms had been handed out to all remaining civilians in Armonia to protect them might mean that the war had reached a point of no return that could spell out the mutual destruction of both sides of the conflict, the survival suit sure cut a slimming figure on her. 

She turned in front of the mirror and looked at her butt which looked surprisingly perky encased in kevlar. Not that she was under any delusions of having a particularly attractive behind, but this was certainly accentuating it in a way that made it seem like there might be more to it than she knew was there. 

Also, apparently the suits were space worthy, and if Emily claimed not to have dreamed of becoming an astronaut when she was little she would be a dirty liar. She'd also dreamed of becoming a doctor and an archaeologist, and she'd managed both of those, so this was really just the logical next step. 

The instruction manual that came with the suit was pretty easy to understand, so it didn't take much time to put on the rest of the armor pieces, and she was fascinated by all the latches, how they fit together and how they adhered to the undersuit. It was really a marvel of technology. Too bad so much of humanity's best inventions were focused to blowing other humans or occasionally aliens to pieces, but that didn't make the achievement any less impressive.

There may have been a slight trepidation as she reached for the helmet, hesitant to accept the finality of it all, but once she put it on there was no room left for existentialism. 

Because the helmet itself was just _so cool._ It may have looked like a purple cyclops, and she'd been questioning its utility with its limited visual range before, but wearing it she realized she'd been clearly wrong. The actual window of the helmet was small and awkwardly placed, because really, who sees with the bridge of their nose? But the actual view wasn't nearly so limited. 

The entire front of the helmet was a screen on the inside, projecting all the environment that the visor didn't show, and adding fun features to scroll through, like heat signature view and night view. And the heads up display, she discovered could be customized to an almost ridiculous extent. She was reasonably sure soldiers on the battlefield only had a limited need for installing different apps, but the functionality was far from unwelcome. 

After installing two different chess games, downloading all her medical journals and putting a book mark in her current chapter of _Blarg means I love you_ , her favorite trashy romance novel (supposed to be based on a real story of a human soldier and a Sangheili falling in love and raising a child together, obviously just made up but it did make her wonder about the possibilities of human and alien reproduction…), she finally took a look in the mirror. 

What she saw was… different. Not that she hadn't seen plenty of Federal army medics around, especially now that her hospital and the main military hospital were supposed to merge. But somehow it was different when it was her. Wearing it reminded her oddly of the first time she'd put on her lab coat when starting to work with patients, feeling boosted in her motivation and ambition just by looking the part. 

Joining a war was in no way something she wanted or was looking forward to in any way, but looking at the important army medic with a surprisingly nice butt in the reflection she felt more important than ever. 

Also, after testing it out, she realized she would never again have to suppress an eye roll at a patient, because no one could see her do it. In fact she could pull any face at any patient and they would be none the wiser. It was almost like a super power after how much willpower it had always used to take her not to let patients know exactly how annoyed she was by how unreasonable they could be. 

Really why wouldn't you want to test an experimental new drug that had a 20% chance of curing you? Live a little. 

Unless you die, of course.

A memory of herself sitting in a storage closet crying a few years ago wormed its way into her thoughts unbidden. Her favorite attending had just been killed on the way to work, caught in the crossfire of an unexpected firefight and she'd been sitting in there for hours. No one had come to get her out of there, because there had been no one left. She'd realized something important, then. No one was going to pick her up, anymore, so she would just have to pick herself up on her own. She would have to do anything it took to keep going, and she'd decided in that moment that keeping up a positive attitude was the way to go. No matter what life throws at you, keep looking on the bright side or risk drowning in despair. 

Scrolling past all the different files she had in her HUD now, and realizing that she could just read during boring meetings without anyone chastising her, now, she found looking on the bright side came much more quickly than it had used to. 

She gave a cheeky wink at her reflection, and then grinned at none of that being visible. 

_Watch out, sick and injured people of Chorus. Emily Grey M.D., Ph.D, surgeon extraordinaire and owner of a newly accentuated butt and her positive attitude are coming to save your lives, and you'll have no idea if I'm rolling my eyes at you._

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about this. I was planning something longer about how Doctor Grey became how she is today, based on some stuff Miles said in the audio commentary of the season 13 DVD, but I just didn't have time to write that much this week, so it's just this little character study thing with nothing happening... but at least I wrote something? 
> 
> Tell me what you think!


End file.
